“Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is dead”; “There is no real purpose for an MVP anymore”; “MVP is a waste of time” – these are statements that have popped up recently on tech blogs, forums, and social networks. Some posts even suggest alternatives to MVP while others in the industry perceive MVP as version 1 of the product. The ambiguity and discord around MVP are hurting businesses and costing them time, money, and resources that could otherwise be spent on building valuable products. Here’s our take on what an MVP is and what it isn’t.
What is an MVP?
The term MVP – Minimum Viable Product might be familiar whether you have dabbled in the technology industry or not. If you have been a customer, investor, or a key decision maker, it is very likely that at some point you have been (over)sold an “MVP”. Since Eric Ries introduced it in his book Lean Startup, the concept of MVPs has stirred several debates within and outside the tech industry. Depending on who you ask, you may discover varied perceptions on MVPs. So, what is an MVP? In the Lean Startup methodology, an MVP is described as “an experiment designed to answer critical business questions.”
Eric Ries defines MVP as “a version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”
As Ries explains in his book, the main purpose of an MVP is to test a hypothesis with the least amount of effort and resources. This means that when developing an MVP you want to focus on delivering the core value of your product while stripping away any unnecessary features. The goal is to validate your idea as quickly as possible so that you can either move on to the next big thing or begin building out your product.
The key word here is experiment. An MVP is not a final product; it is merely a stepping stone on your way to discovering whether or not your product is worth pursuing. This is where many people get MVPs wrong. They treat MVPs as final products and try to cram too much into them instead of using them for what they are meant for – testing a hypothesis.
Based on our experience, we have developed a template that helps define the hypothesis first, and then the MVP(s) to validate or invalidate it. Click download to get the template:
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What are the differences between MVPs and MMPs?
MVPs are relevant when you wish to build a product or solution and get to market as quickly as possible; typically, it takes more than one MVP to validate your assumptions. Though Eric Ries’ definition is very clear, MVPs are still widely misunderstood and at times wrongly interpreted as a MMP – Minimum Marketable Product, a version of the product that can be marketed to customers, or worst yet Version 1 of the product, which is counterintuitive to the original purpose.
When done correctly, MVPs can save you time, money, and resources by helping you validate (or invalidate) your ideas quickly and efficiently. However, if not done correctly, they can do the exact opposite. This is why it’s important to understand the difference between an MVP and an MMP (Minimum Marketable Product). An MMP is very similar to an MVP in that its focus is on delivering value to customers while stripping away any unnecessary features. The main difference between an MVP and an MMP is that an MVP is solely focused on testing a hypothesis while an MMP is focused on delivering value to customers.
Minimum Awesome Product (MAP), Minimum Lovable Product (MLP), Minimum Remarkable Product (MRP) are a few other variants of MVP that have been taking rounds – no matter how creative the term sounds, the focus should be on learning faster rather than launching the ideal product.
The Lean Startup methodology recommends starting with an MVP in order to validate your idea as quickly as possible. Once you have validated your idea, you can then begin building out your product and adding more features until you have an MMP. So, what should you build – an MVP or an MMP? The answer depends on your specific situation. If you are trying to validate a new idea, you should start with an MVP. If you already have a validated idea and are simply trying to bring it to market, you should focus on building an MMP.
Let’s see the key differences between MVP and MMP:
Why talk about MVPs now?
Amidst economic uncertainties and mounting challenges in raising capital, organizations are struggling to launch new products and stay profitable at the same time, which means understanding the core purpose of an MVP has become critically significant than ever before. Let’s see how most organizations approach this today: Disclaimer – There are always exceptions! If your company is one that gets it right then kudos; if not keep reading to understand some of the pitfalls.
In large organizations, MVPs are usually formulated based on outcomes linked to strategic inorganic growth – i.e., launching a new product or solution, expanding to a new market, testing a new idea, and so on. The top management typically overlooks the effort required to enter a new market and desperately tries hard to achieve growth with their original and quite often dated business model. Each year, the leadership team identifies several strategic goals and associated outcomes, of which tech-driven outcomes often translate to a few MVPs. Interestingly enough, these end up being feature-rich (read: version 1) products masqueraded as MVPs without much validated learnings or iterations in the equation. As long as MVPs are developed in an Agile way, everything is good right? Wrong. Doing the wrong thing in an “Agile way” simply amplifies the problem but that’s a topic for another post. Sam McAfee’s recent article on LinkedIn talks more about the drawbacks of following Agile in a specious context.
Startups on the other hand approach this from a totally different angle and still manage to get things wrong. To achieve product-market fit and validate their business models, startups must focus on building MVPs swiftly and cost-effectively. Invariably, this would mean trying different things until the MVP or series of MVPs can be locked into a product that can gain traction in the market. Most startups struggle to stay the course and get rushed into building products with the sole intention of demonstrating early success and raising capital through funding rounds.
How to get MVPs right
Steve Blank, a well-known innovation thought leader and academician at Stanford describes an MVP Tree, originally proposed by Shawn Carolan.
“An MVP tree is a way of methodically breaking your mission into smaller components and formulating MVP candidates that may get your company sustainable and scalable” – Shawn Carolan and Steve Blank.
Shawn Carolan recommends that companies should focus more on the MVP Tree rather than a North Star or Mission.
Source: Steveblank.com
Stages to Developing MVPs
Stage 1 – The Mission
Defining your mission in a simple enough way might sound relatively straightforward. It is quite the opposite – most companies find it difficult to clearly articulate a mission statement or for that matter redefine their existing mission and goals. Here are a few examples of mission statements:
Tesla – “To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.”
Amazon – “We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.”
Stage 2 – Customer Archetypes, Riskiest Assumptions, and Execution
Establish your customer archetypes or personas with needs that align with your mission. Use the Jobs to be Done framework (first discussed by Clayton M. Christensen) to outline the customer pains, gains, and jobs to be done. You can complement this with riskiest assumptions related to the value proposition across the Desirability, Viability and Feasibility aspects of the proposed solution. Assumptions mapping is a great tool that can help you outline and prioritize the riskiest assumptions and put a plan towards validating them. This is when you also outline execution options including go-to-market plans, delivery, and sales channels.
Stage 3 – Scope out MVP 1 – MVP n
Aligned to your assumptions, you can define the MVP 1 scope and define experiments and tests that will help you gain validated learnings towards building the next iteration or MVP 2. Shawn Carolan describes three different criteria that the MVP should satisfy: MVP addresses a meaningful job to be done; MVP has a growth engine; MVP supports faster time-to-value. During this stage, you are validating your initial assumptions and hypotheses to decide whether you should persevere, pivot, or kill the idea. Once you successfully validate your assumptions through experiments supported by a series of MVPs that satisfy the criteria above, it’s time to build an MMP.
Stage 4 – Scope out an MMP
Armed with validated learnings from Stage 3, you are now geared towards learning more about actual customer behavior and feedback on core features of your product. You are now looking at your initial assumptions/hypotheses and exploring ways to accommodate features that effectively support the customer jobs to be done. During MMP development, you incorporate features from multiple versions of MVPs and focus more on understanding key demographics and associated user behaviors that can be used to improve the product.
Stage 5 – Launch
Now that you have a focused solution with validated learnings through series of MVPs aligned to a targeted customer archetype and associated job to be done, you are ready to launch! Use this stage to finetune the features based on all the learnings and line up execution – go to market, sales, delivery, and operations. Remember, this is not the destination, you repeat the process and constantly iterate until you have achieved product-market fit and eventually business model-fit.
Examples of MVP
Airbnb
Airbnb is a great example of an MVP gone right. The company started out as a simple Airbnb website that allowed users to find rooms to rent from other people in their city. From there, they added features like online bookings and a payment system.
Slack
Slack is another interesting example of an MVP in action. The team messaging app was launched as a simple way for workers to communicate with each other. But since then, it’s added tons of features like video calls and integrations with third-party apps.
And then there’s Google. The tech giant is known for releasing products that are “done” (i.e., not in beta). But in reality, most Google products are MVPs in disguise. Gmail, for example, was launched as a bare-bones email service with only basic features. Over time, Google added more and more features, like spam filtering and labels.
Closing Notes
So there you have it: three examples of successful MVPs from some of the biggest names in tech. remember, the key to an MVP is to start small and build on user feedback.
At Innoway, instead of talking about MVPs, we discuss about what is the riskiest hypothesis that our idea needs to validate/invalidate next. Only AFTER we have defined it, we think about the MVP (or testing vehicle) that will help us do the job. So don’t be afraid to test your product before it’s “perfect.” Your users will thank you for it!
Hopefully, this article has helped clear up confusions surrounding MVPs. If you have any further questions or would like to learn more about Lean Startup methodology, be sure to check out Eric Ries’ book Lean Startup or connect with us. If you liked this article, check out other content on https://innoway.me/blog.
